A Christmas Carol - Sample Essay

Scrooge makes a ‘moral journey’ in Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol’. Examine the development of scrooge’s character in light of this statement, focusing on staves 2 and 4. ‘A Christmas Carol’ was written by the famous writer Charles Dickens it was written in the 18th century. Dickens is famous for writing other books such as ‘Oliver Twist’, ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘Hard Times’. Each one of these novels has a journey. They all involve the class system and how poor people were treated badly by richer people.

‘A Christmas Carol’ shows that money doesn’t buy happiness because Scrooge wasn’t happy at the beginning of the novel he was just a bitter old man. But by the end he has people around him and he seems much happier. So this proves that you are much happier when you have family and friends around. Dickens style is very clever and complex. Dickens uses long words and sentences. He also uses long wordy sentences and then in between two he uses a short snappy sentence this is to add atmosphere and tension to the setting, situation and characters state of mind.

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This can also change the way you feel about a character. Dickens uses very descriptive techniques and words. There is always more behind what he writes like ‘his cold eye glistens’ this means Scrooge has a lack of emotion so he doesn’t cry his cold eyes just glisten. I think by Dickens writing this he wanted to say that if your bitter, cold and lonely you lose all emotion in you and you lose the ability to cry. But if you change or never become the things scrooge was you will not be inhuman because you will have emotion.

Dickens style has a lot of imperial meaning like when he uses the words ‘Ding, Dong! ‘ he does this to translate and express Scrooges annoyed state of mind, it also annoys the readers because they think why is Dickens repeating this because its pointless but its not because it does what Dickens wanted it to do successfully. Dickens’s structure is organised in stages of scrooges moral journey of by using the staves and spirits. Each stave represents a stage in Scrooges life.

Each stave represents a stage in Scrooges life: before the change, the past, the present, the future and the change is complete (the conclusion). In stave 4 Dickens refers to the spirit of the future as ‘The phantom’ and he says ‘the phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached it was shrouded in deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible’. Dickens does this to set atmosphere and it sets a scary mood and makes the spirit of Christmas future sound eerie and scary.

Dickens does this because humans can’t see the future so scrooge can’t see the spirit of the Christmas futures face or body because humans can’t see the future so therefore you can’t see the spirit of future’s face or body because it is as if he represents the future and you can’t see the future. Dickens uses a clever technique when Bella says ‘ I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not? ‘ This means that Bella is asking Scrooge if she has seen Scrooges good and kind things stop one by one until the selfishness, greed, money and ‘Gain’ over took him.

Dickens uses the word ‘Gain’ with a capital letter in the beginning of the word; he does this because Bella refers to the word gain as a person, so she is basically saying that Scrooge is in love with money and gaining it more then the other kind and good things he used to do and even more than her. ‘A Christmas Carol’ has many themes but one of the main ones is redemption. One of the shown elements of redemption from Scrooge is when he says ”spirit’ said Scrooge, ‘show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture? ” Scrooge says this just after where Bella lets him leave her because he loves money and gain more than her.

Scrooge is saying this because he regrets what happened so he gets angry and shouts at the spirit because he doesn’t want to show any emotion. Another main theme is morality (good and bad) I know this because the theme represents Scrooges journey from a horrible bitter man who says and does horrible and bitter things like saying ‘coal and costly’ and ‘humbug’ into a kind, giving man who says and does kind things like saying ‘merry Christmas’ and like going to his nephews house with a good intentions and giving Cratchits family the biggest turkey in the shop.

Another theme is the class system. I know this because Dickens wanted the way society worked to change at the time that the book was written. In the ‘Christmas Carol’ is puts the message that rich people treated poor people poorly. Poor people didn’t want to go to work houses because they would get treated badly and Dickens wanted to put this across to society and he did is small clever ways like the poor women says ‘rather we all drawn together’ this was like dickens mouth piece. In ‘A Christmas Carol’ scrooge makes a huge moral journey all in one night, a Christmas Eve night.